


this snare of ice

by Allegory



Category: Original Work, Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: ...maybe? when they're older?, Angst, Death, Gay, Gen, Grief, Li Zhe Fang x Ji Guang Hong, Loss, M/M, MxM - Freeform, NVM im making it a series, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, Yaoi, idek that sounded cooler in my head, the good stuff, yes. time skip thing is gonna happen.
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-26
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-26 23:32:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9929621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allegory/pseuds/Allegory
Summary: One boy and his Olympic dreams crash and burn as just as the program is about to end and he's nearly there, nearly, the flash of cameras and cellphones glittering like the gold they'll put around his neck he acknowledges, in what feels like a moment lost in time, an intense burn in the flexion of his foot and the bite of frigid ice against his cheek. He will not get up. Not now, maybe never again.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I once read about " olympic camps" in china and how one baby from beijing was basically being bent and thrown around in bed all day by her parents because they felt the olympics was the only way their kid would succeed in life.

Li Zhe Fang digs his fingers into the bruise under his ankle.

_Heal_ , he thinks. _Heal_.

Pain stings him all the way up to the roots of his teeth. The first month he'd started skating he'd been an anonymous figure in the crowd, just another kid with an Olympian dream. Seven years down the line when he falls and bends his legs in angles they should not be bent, and still manages to save whichever axle he's on, coach taps the medical kit by the rink and yells his bestowed alias, Shen Zing Gui, which means that he's more than a little loose in the head. Coach Lin tells him that he has the pleasure of being, according to her prediction as not only a three time Olympian but a first aid practitioner, her first student to most likely snap some bone that will require ER, scalpels and crutches. She rectified that during practise earlier today; he should invest in a wheelchair.

Zhe Fang doesn't listen. He never listens, really, not to advice that translates to "stop" in his head- which is ninety percent of what anyone has to say. Pain is still pain though, and Zhe Fang is still human so his entire body goes rigid and he bangs the floor with his fist, grunting. It's not enough. He's not training hard enough; can't do it, not with all the pockmarks and dark patches mottling both his feet and legs. He glances at the calendar on his yellowed wall, stares at the red circling a date at the end of the month. 25th June. Just a little over three weeks to the competition that will define his life.

It's little wonder that he arrives at the rink early tomorrow, borrows the receptionist's P.C. and looks up more ways to accelerate the healing of his wounds. He sits there in darkness, the only light a lazy dawn filtering through curtains in the office. Artificial blue windows glow in his chocolate irises, blocks of text interrupted by intermittent advertisements about the newest cancer-free vape and 2.99 annual laundry loan, terms and conditions apply. Zhe Fang falls again and again during practise that day and he knows something has gone terribly wrong because he's starting to hear 'pop' sounds with each step of his rickety legs.

Coach Lin makes him stay back. She sits him by the audience bench where they go over his free skate program. He peels the skin under his fingers the whole time while she speaks, one hand on the controls to start and stop the music. Eventually her voice fades and Zhe Fang zones back in. He looks up at her, meeting her eyes like a tentative doe.

"I'm worried about you," she says, putting a hand on his shoulder. Zhe Fang doesn't move away.

"I'm okay."

"You're going to break someday if you don't start taking care of yourself. I swear this to you. You have the potential to be great, but not at this pace."

"I need this. Nothing else will matter if I don't win."

The Asian Skating Olympics. Zhe Fang will die if he does not win gold. Coach Lin doesn't understand what drives him; she doesn't know the first thing about him, his parentage, who he lives with or anything other than the emergency contact number in the name of some stranger Zhe Fang had scribbled on the spot.

When he goes home that night, skulking through the alleys where sirens blare every couple hours and someone shrieks on either side of his apartment block, his father is lounging on a mouldy couch with two cigarettes between his lips. His friends surround him, mahjong blocks aligned like toy soldiers on a green table. He tries to sneak past unseen, holding his breath by instinct, fingers clutching his school bag. He's almost halfway across the room when someone pushes back on their chair and the mahjong blocks glide through the air. His dad has won this round, which means that he'll go for more and more until at some point he'll lose all the money to pay off their electric bills, and Zhe Fang will have to peep at locker combinations again.

He can leave if he wins the ASO junior division. Sponsorship to pursue figure skating and Zhe Fang will never have to see his dad again. If China doesn't need him, no one else will.

Listening to a tape recording of his program song- the recorder he had found in a scrap junkyard two streets down- Zhe Fang tosses and turns in his mattress until he winds up on the floor, tearing the index page of an old textbook, back when he still had funds to go to school.  He scribbles, pausing and pursing his lips every few words. These thoughts have plagued his mind for a while now, and he figures he should do it if he loses. When he loses. It's only a matter of time. 

Zhe Fang packs his things in a plastic bag. Every belonging he's ever had in his life fits neatly into the transparent polymer, with more than a quarter of empty space. Better this than to stay.

Competition day.

Zhe Fang gives them all a show to his song, a tribute to a woman he'd once known, long black hair tickling his nose, labouring arms a promise to protect him from this vicious world. One boy and his Olympic dreams crash and burn as just as the program is about to end and he's nearly there, nearly, the flash of cameras and cellphones glittering like the gold they'll put around his neck he acknowledges, in what feels like a moment lost in time, an intense burn in the flexion of his foot and the bite of frigid ice against his cheek. He will not get up. Not now, maybe never again.

He fiddles with his IV tube. Coach Lin doesn't make time to visit.

It's his last night in the hospital before they kick him out. No one is going to pay for treatment. When visitor time has ended, Zhe Fang crawls up from his bed, plucking tubes and wires off his body and yanking himself off the bed, his legs heavy lead behind him. He rummages through his bag for the index page he'd written on and places it under a glass vase, filled with stale water but empty of flowers. _Pull, pull_. Zhe Fang curls his fingers around the aluminium frame of the window, slides it open.

They put him on the fifty - first floor.

Zhe Fang tastes the smog of China's ghoulish skies, peppery clouds riding among gangly conglomerates, and the salt in his tears as he whispers his mother's name and feels for once, in the chilly air pushing against him, almost like someone wishes him to live. And that is enough to go peacefully.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have literally no idea where this is going,,,,buckle up buckeroonies, we're goin for a ride,,,..l mao

“Guang, come see this.”

Guang Hong is shoving pork dumplings in sesame oil and shoving them in his face when his mother calls him over. Puzzled, he glances at his dad, who shrugs with his eyes tracing the newspaper he’d only half-read before running off to work this morning. If there’s anything Guang Hong has learned from living both here and in Canada, it’s that China is simply not a mistress who waits for anyone.

He puts his chopsticks down and, patting his belly (still hungry; practice has been taxing on the grocery funds), he waddles over to the next room and peeks around the door. Guang’s mother stands in front of the television screen with a bowl and whisk, vigorously churning the contents that would soon become his favorite classic: red bean paste buns. His mouth waters just thinking about the warm center that will ooze into his mouth and curl under his tongue, sweet as death.

At the nudge of her chin, Guang Hong turns his attention to the HD flat screen.

_...report of what appears to be the suicide attempt of a twelve year old boy, Li Zhe Fang, identified as a prodigal figure skater of the Beijing community who recently suffered a sports injury during…_

Guang Hong’s body goes cold. The dumplings swish uncomfortably in his stomach and he can’t take his eyes off the screen, which is now showing a blurred and pixelated mass on a grey pavement. The crimson bleeds out in a tiny pool. Even with the editing, Guang Hong hadn’t imagined a suicide would look so…tidy.

“Ma—“ he starts. At the tender age of fourteen, this is the sort of scene that his mother would usually try to blindfold him from. She merely shushes him with creased eyebrows.

The rest of the news details the one thing that makes this case stand out from the thousands of suicides that happen each day, each time Guang Hong steps out of his house. No parental claim. No one who visited the young skater during the days leading up to his suicide. The news reporter speculates that it had been due to financial reasons that Li Zhe Fang threw himself out of the hospital to a gruesome death and Guang Hong’s blood curdles at the word _financial._

For now they’re keeping him in the I.C.U. The surgeon who operated on him explains that the walnut tree of the neighboring office block had ultimately cushioned his fall. _Fifty-one floors,_ the surgeon says, taking off her glasses and rubbing them against her coat. _You know that a boy’s special when he falls fifty-one floors and lives. I sincerely hope that someone will come to his aid._

“I need to see him,” Guang Hong says, immediately as the news reporter switches to talk about some political campaign elsewhere. His eyes burn with the fire that tears through him in competitions, the intention to win blazing a trail through the ice.

“I’ll drive you,” his mom answers.

*

That weekend the two of them buckle down and make their way to the hospital on the news. Living in the more rural countryside, their ride will take an estimated four hours so there’s no shortage of Pocky sticks and sweets stuffed in Guang Hong’s sash. At the hospital reception, Guang Hong is spotted by a fan who puts two and two together, though is mildly surprised that Guang Hong has never met Zhe Fang. The ASO had taken place a week before Guang Hong came home for a break; already being on the national roster, he’d decided to skip it this year in favor of Skate America’s decidedly greater exposure.

Guang Hong and his mother stand outside the I.C.U, rather lost. The nurses rush around them like a swarm of bees, knocking tables and chairs, papers flying in the air. Just as Guang Hong is about to approach a plump man, face grim but mostly sedentary compared to his fellows, a familiar face emerges at the end of the room. It’s the surgeon who’d appeared on TV.

“Excuse me!” Guang Hong’s mother yells, when he tugs her skirt and points frantically at the surgeon. The two of them sidle up to her. “Is Li Zhe Fang still here?”

The surgeon rolls her neck in a half-circle. “Room six—next time, do take the back entrance—“ Guang Hong’s mother apologizes profusely, bobbing her head up and down. The surgeon waves her off, “It’s alright, this place needs some signboards. Assuming you’re here to visit him, you should probably know that we’re pulling the plug in two days.”

Guang Hong’s heart skips three beats. He doesn’t understand how the woman can say such a thing so nonchalantly, but it makes sense, really; even if she had offered not to take a percentage off the operation, there was still the bed and the check-ups and electricity, and seeing as this place is so busy, it shouldn’t come as a shock that those who can fork the greens live to see another day. They probably got people like Zhe Fang coming in all the time, though maybe not strictly twelve year old, parentless and suicidal. It’s a pitiful combination when Guang Hong lists it out in his head.

The surgeon picks up a call as Guang Hong and his mother leave, taking the long route to the back entrance of the unit. When they find room six, his mother kneels down to his height and says, “We don’t want to overwhelm him, so I’ll wait out here.” Guang Hong nods but anxiety tingles up his spine. He hadn’t thought he’d really be here, in the room of a complete stranger who shared only one similarity with him. Just one, but a crucial one nonetheless: the snare of ice.

Inside, the room is lit sharply by artificial white light. The rooms on the other side of the unit boast panoramic views of the seaside while Zhe Fang’s, in contrast, seem almost like a storeroom. Li Zhe Fang, who’d once been only a visual image in his mind’s eye, solidifies before him. Black hair almost reaching his nape; bangs, tousled in his injured state. A breathing human in the flesh. His ribcage rises under the green hospital gown and his face mask is cupped in one, boney hand. Zhe Fang has his gaze fixed on his toes, peeking out of his blanket. He turns languidly, disinterested, when Guang Hong clears his throat.

Zhe Fang says nothing. Guang Hong had been expecting something along the lines of, _who are you?_ Or _why are you here?_ But Zhe Fang is devoid of words, and his eyes are like those of a person long dead, perhaps one who’d never even lived.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: im chinese and i can barely write a sentence in Mandarin lol. in other news it's nice to write about characters my own race for a change.  
> Tumblr @ warmwintersun


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